


Nightmare's Dilemma

by BSplendens



Series: Miscellaneous TF fics (mostly TFP), AKA where the completed TF bunnies live [9]
Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: M/M, Mentions of butchering dead mechs, Mild mentions of messy kills, Soundwave being creepy, that's about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-18
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-04-09 21:43:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4365260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BSplendens/pseuds/BSplendens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People don't call Soundwave "Nightmare of Kaon" for nothing. Unfortunately, a mech who tries his best to be a nightmare has no idea how to be gentle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmare's Dilemma

Soundwave learned at a young age that fear was a weapon. As a youngling, he quickly learned that he wasn't strong enough to win a fight with the local bullies, and outrunning them didn't always work. But once, he tried whirling around and facing them, flaring all his armor out and hissing in the most dangerous manner he could manage. It worked, especially with his tentacles out. The whispers of "Freak!" became much more common, but no one wanted to touch him. There were rumors going around, even then, rumors that he was the son of a sparkeater. They weren't true, of course, but he wasn't going to tell anyone. 

Once older, he learned that no gang would touch him if he left the energon on his claws, if he killed those who tried and left them hung from something for everyone to see. There were more whispers now; sparkeater-kin, monster in disguise, spawn of Unicron himself. And people learned to fear him.   
He learned quickly that it scared people more if they couldn't see his face, couldn't see if he was scared, couldn't see if he was angry or not or what he planned to do to them. His optics had always been expressive, always given him away, but hiding them left him able to hide everything else. And then the rumors began to spread that the visor WAS his face, or that he was hiding something under there... maybe he was really a sparkeater? Not many knew what they looked like, after all, but they knew of the tentacles and the fangs... and he could be hiding fangs under there. 

In the Pit, he learned to make his opponents fear him even more. He couldn't just wait for the quiet menace to sink in, he had to be outright terrifying. He learned to kill messy- not slowly, he couldn't stomach slowly killing someone, but he'd already learned to stomach drilling holes in their chassis and stomach and helm, winding tentacles under their plating and slicing them apart from the inside, and that never failed to get a few shudders.   
And when he lost... he had to learn how to make others less likely to hurt him while he was injured. Some wouldn't be fazed by anything, but if he hissed and snarled and bit, and especially if he played scraps of recordings of a Sparkeater's screech, some would leave him alone until he had managed to heal. 

And somewhere along the way he earned the name Nightmare of Kaon. He always rather liked that title... it helped spread his reputation, but honestly, he also just liked how it sounded. And... Nightmare suited him, or at least he thought it did. That was what he tried to be, after all... he tried to make people as nervous as possible.   
And he secretly loved seeing people cringe and tuck their plating in and sneak away from him. 

That was why he sometimes hung his kills from tall things, why he sometimes pulled his kills apart and just generally made a mess of them. It wasn't out of any form of sadism, he'd never butcher a live mech like that, but he needed to scare people... and honestly, sometimes it was interesting to half-butcher a particularly unpleasant opponent. 

But he's spent so long learning how to terrify people that he never learned how to be sweet, and a mech who's hidden all his life tends to be bad at expressing emotions. Soundwave would like to show how he feels, would like to make his partner feel good, would like to do something to express how good this mech makes him feel... too bad he never spent any time learning how to be loving.   
Maybe he should just... keep trying what he's always doing. This is how he usually learns, after all... he tries things for himself, experiments and tests until he figures out what works.   
Hopefully he can figure this out.

**Author's Note:**

> I dunno where this came from, and I know it's probably not very good. It was jumping around in my brain and bothering me. Had to type it out to make it shut up.


End file.
